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Mar. 23rd, 2008 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vicarzI hate easter.
Do you notice that my bugs' antenna move?
This AM I woke up, despite all of our arguments with the new advanced breathalyzer, 100% fine (no surprise, I felt sober no matter what that machine said and even a rough calc of booze to time said it had to be wrong). So fun was had without consequences, though those stupid kids didn't give us any beads...
So I was up early, and decided rather than work on those things that need doing I'd shoot shit. I checked the hours at blue ridge arsenal, and headed out. First coffee to get my hands shaky for shooting practice, and then to Manassas. Got out there in record time, only to find that it was easter and the place was closed - no so much as a sign on the door to note for the non-majority-religion bunnies either. Bastards. Yeah, they BETTER have guns!
Ok back to planet earth for those who survived the negativity. I was thinking I would work out in the afternoon, but first...I decided to experiment and see if the rusty nut would move down the bolt, not move at all and just crumble, or move and take the bolt with it in a perpetual spin of "hacksaw time." You see, when I first moved into this apt over a year ago, the toilet leaked and would occasionally run. I waited for ages to get the time to fix it - decided to gut the whole thing from the ground up, but never had time - not since Feb 07.
I tested one bolt - and to my shock with credit to wd-40, it moved like an actual bolt. I tested this washer, turned off the water, tested the other bolt, checked the clock...and figured what the hell - laid out some newspaper, put on plastic gloves, and started to take the thing apart. I've had the replacement parts in the hallway for almost a year, even the "wax ring."
The most disgusting thing about an old toilet, at least to my senses, is the dissolving old rubber. It's slimy at the touch, and leaves horrid black goo on everything that brushes against it - goo that is resistant to soap and scrubbing, seemingly permeating layers of flesh with it's black stain. Early in the bolt removal stage I found that my protective gloves had water and black goo inside them - I had on the world's most disgusting halloween costume. Like when I stepped in a pit deeper than my boots when I ran the pump in the flooded horse's stalls, the protective gear was now worthless - so I was working on the toilet sans protection.
I got most of the guts off with reasonable effort, only...the nut that had been so agreeable only moments earlier stopped turning half-way through it's journey to the top of the bolt. I tried gripping the top of the bolt with pliers and got a few more turns - enough to slip the needle-nose pliers around the bottom - but to no avail, I could not get the nut to turn. I broke out the dollar-store hack saw...yeah, one of those.
Actually, hack-sawing through the bolt wasn't that bad, except for one tiny little slip which rammed the hacksaw blade into my thumb right where the nail ends. Great - now I'm working on a 50 year old used toilet with bare hands and a FLESH WOUND. How many types of hep can you get from old poo? My immanent death aside, the $1 hacksaw made its way through the bolt in only about 5-15 minutes. The rest of the tank guts were short work, with some grunting here and a big mess over there. Still, I was sure I was near victory when I lifted the tank off the base, and the base off the floor.
Disturbing was the block of wood and cardboard underneath the old toilet...was that all that kept it from rocking? Also, the ... flange? ... was rusted past recognition. The wax ring was about as disgusting as I expected to the eye, but...oh...it got worse. Much worse. It didn't just lift off in one fell swoop, oh no. No, it liked where it was, having put down roots and merged with the rusted base. It was not clear where one ended and the other began. In true ghetto fashion, I used a flat-head screwdriver to scrape the wax ring off. I got most of it to come up in one blob...but could not avoid touching it.
I should mention that around this time my downstairs neighbor flushed his toilet. I heard every little ripple of water and...well hope just water as it went down. I decided it was a good time to open the window - it didn't smell, but I've heard of sewer gasses and wasn't sure when I might be caught unaware. There are more dignified ways to die.
See, a toilet sits on a wax ring that never gets hard to ensure that it always is water tight as it delivers its contents to the local sewer lines. Whenever you put a toilet down, you have to moosh it onto a new wax ring to ensure a tight forever fit. Problem is, unlike candle wax which amuses children and kinksters alike, toilet bowl base wax never hardens. Imagine, if you will, a wax which is never hard. A wax which sticks to your fingers. A wax that sticks to your screwdriver. A wax which happily gloms to everything it comes into contact with, and leaves a goey residue to remember it by. It was about now I broke out the larger trash bag, and started elbow-controlling the metal sink. I was alone, but I'm not ashamed to tell you that I said many unpleasant things - some unpleasant things didn't in fact form actual words, but trust me they were highly expressive of the 'at-hand' situation. Egads, man.
Did I mention I had a hack-saw blade cut on my thumb?
I tried to clean the base as best I could, and wondered if I should run to the store and get another. I was a kind of filthy I didn't want to share with my apt, lest of all the public. I couldn't discern actual pieces or stopping points of this alleged "flange" or whatever tops a sewer line in your home, so I scraped until the surface seemed flat. About now I brushed against the directions, and figured out which end was up on the wax ring. The directions were a good venture as I was wrong about the wax ring - you don't put it on the ground and plant the toilet on it, you plant it on the toilet and then sink it into the ground. Simple.
Or not so simple. Turns out guiding a giant porcelain altar's two tiny holes, which if you're holding one are behind a giant bowl, onto a rusty hole which has two erect brass bolts on it, is not only difficult - but going to get you a ton more fun and joy of wax on your fingers. See, the damn wax kept sticking to the bolts, knocking them over, and then making them stick to everything they touched. Did I mention how the forever gooey wax felt on my hands? Did I mention you can't really wash it off even with hot water, that you mostly have to use those rags-in-a-box and pray to your deity for dissolvence?
Eventually I realized free-balling wasn't working for plumbing trades, so I levered the thing down while holding the bolts still with my fingers. Much was encountered and probably absorbed into my bloodstream, but it was new wax and I did get the thing to seat properly. After wiping the waxy residue off, surprisingly the bowl was easily tightened to the floor with no rocking. Now, I tried not to over-tighten the nuts, but I can't tell you what is good and bad tightness. My gauge was about "hand tight until not rocking 3 half turns" give or take. Rags removed the rest of the wax spilloff.
That was supposed to be the gross, but easy part. I remember someone telling me that there was a seal you needed for the tank...the thought and vague memory occurred to me now, rather than when I was buying necessities in home depot.
Did I mention that when I got back from the gunnery that I checked the website and it had a colorful egg display with bold letters saying "closed easter sunday?" Do you know how important your powers of observation, categorization, and retention are for attorneys? Do you know that being José means that every day brings nothing but surprises?
I screwed things into the tank more based on where they seemed to fit through intuition and spatial relations than through guided instruction. Only...when things didn't fit, I turned to the instructions. They utterly failed me...pictures, words...flange? Turnspout? Are they tearing one washer from another? Why are there 4 pictures of the same thing? My monkey hands, potentially with poo, potentially not my poo, were better tools and instructions than the paper at every juncture.
The thing was, one setback after another, looking at the bastard clock and realizing that my chore had morphed into 4 hours, things went relatively smoothly. Pieces fit, and trial and error resulted in something that appeared like what i had replaced, only shinier and it didn't leave slimy black smudges on you when you touched it.
You wash your hands a lot when you touch a lot of goo. In fact, you wipe your hands a lot, throw away a lot of rags, and use a lot of soap when you touch a lot of goo or potential goo. At least I do. Did.
I got the thing put together and slowly, apprehensively, turned on the water. No flooding, though it didn't start off smoothly. Some trial nad error, a change I don't know how I made or what change occurred, and the toilet filled. I flushed, it flushed, and all seemed good with the world. Bawoosh was rewarding, for a time.
Until I realized the tank was lopsided. And leaking.
I think that's enough of the toilet story - suffice to say it mostly works right now, and the floors, toilet, sink, tub, some walls, and all sorts of parts of my person have been scrubbed with ammonia based cleaners, bleach based cleaners, rags, sponges, and other things that were thrown into a plastic trash bag to take their horrors to places never to be seen or heard from again.
But the tank was leaking. This...brings me to a last tidbit I should share about my neighbor. I just re-met my other neighbor, an Indian girl. I found a white-gold diamond ring in the hallway - left a note, she called and described the ring, and I returned it. She probably trusts me now. Not so much my other neighbor.
I had cleaned the bathroom, cleaned me, and happily flushed and flushed and flushed the toilet again. Only, it seemed wobblier than I remember. In fact it was sort of a toilet, sort of a dangerous porcelain bobble-head. I rechecked the worthless directions. I tightened the bolts. I loosened the bolts. I re-tightened and re-loosened the bolts. I pressed down and screwed, I held with pliers and screwed, but I only managed to lessen or worsen the...
My mother called me. I told her it was a bad time. It was.
...the seepage. Then, only now, did I vaguely recall this story once relayed to me about the problem someone had about the seal between the tank and the bowl. Ah. Then...it occurred to me. I have an old "uses water" toilet, for which they're not just phasing out toilets - but parts as well. Perhaps...perhaps my bobble-headed-toilet tank was sitting on a giant tank washer than works great for a lo-flo, but not quite as great on a gush-guzzler. Huh. An ugly thought dawned on me...for if worst came to worst, that gooey black rubber...
When the glove first leaked black ooze into the flesh of my hand, I had that sinking feeling akin to "the rubber broke."
...gooey black rubber ring might be my last chance of a tight seal between these two. This child might be the only thing to save the porcelain marriage. And...that seal was buried underneath every rag, every piece of used toilet guts, every unspeakable horror that was now jumbled in a trash bag on my doorstep. It was then I went CSI.
For the most part, I was now clean (other than my surely acquired heps x y and z). So I dawned more latex gloves, got a plastic grocery bag, got and opened a clear sandwich bag, and ventured into the hallway. I untied the bag and began to root around. A moosh told me when I found the old wax ring. < shudder > < even through gloves > It was then I heard the building's front door open. I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but I kept rooting through the bag. The footsteps kept climbing. 1st level. 2nd. And of course, didn't stop but kept coming up the stairs. I feign dignity, normalcy, and not-shame as I see my immediate neighbor and burst out into a friendly "Hey!" The sound he made was something like a bark and squeak, followed by a quick unlocking and relocking of his door. See, I was digging through a black trash bag, in the hallway, with clear rubber gloves on and an "evidence bag" beside it. I'm sure he now believes he knows exactly what happened to that girl that used to visit all the time.
On the other hand, I'm relatively sure he'll never complain about the noise.
Tomorrow I'll flush the toilet and turn off the water, and stop by a despot to see if I can find the appropriately sized plastic ring. I'll also ask if there is any guide to how many turns are good or bad on the floor bolts, or how many turns are good or bad on the tank bolts. I'm sure the worst is over, and the slow leak now is hardly dampening part of a t-shirt I have wrapped around the base of the toilet.
Despite all that work, which did take a toll on weird muscles, I cleaned up and hit the gym. Returning I did laundry with HOT WATER, black clothes be damned just in case. Of course the tools were also washed in all sorts of solvents, and then dried. I only finished now when...I decided to record this.
I'm ready for bed, and perhaps even the office.
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:)
Date: 2008-03-24 03:55 am (UTC)i dig your writing and i'm really impressed with your effort and self-reliance. it made me tired for you just reading, but you made it sound fun.
i've never dawned gloves before. does it involve putting gloves on in the morning? :)
Re: :)
Date: 2008-03-24 06:51 am (UTC)Priceless! :)
Re: :)
Date: 2008-03-24 09:07 am (UTC)http://vicar.livejournal.com/481560.html
Re: :)
Date: 2008-03-24 01:57 pm (UTC)Toilet work yeesh.
Um, fyi, if you again insist in re-seating a toilet yourself, place a couple of 2x4's on the front and back of where the toilet will sit, position the toilet on those, then knock them down w/your feet to let you lower the toilet, and then finally kicking them out all-together.
Re: :)
Date: 2008-03-24 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-03-24 06:50 am (UTC)FYI, the seal to the base of the tank is a standard part. They are readily available. Yes, I have done all this myself. I was raised by a handy, do-it-yourself dad.
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Date: 2008-03-24 09:04 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2008-03-24 01:26 pm (UTC)Oh my God! Jose's truffles are PEOPLE!
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